Friday, February 24, 2017

Putting together a home theater that
suits your particular needs takes time and represents a significant investment.
But whether you opt in for a professional installation service to do it all for
you, like California’s #1 Custom Installation/Smart Home Integrators for the
past 16 years, Just One Touch), or decide to set up the various
components on your own, keeping them secure is sensible and necessary. And by
making sure your home theater is safe, you're also ensuring the
safety of your home (which is where the home theater “lives" after all).
Here are a few suggestions:

Tethering

Many home theater's have computers or
hard drives working as servers to stream content through the home network.
Often there will be what is called a security slot on the computer/hard drive
(or laptop). This allows for a security cable to be inserted that can then
tether the device to an immovable object so it can't be taken. While such a
security slot can not be found on the majority of the components that make up a
home theater, there are security kits that can add locking capabilities to the
devices (requiring an invasive gluing of a plate to the device first).

Out Of Sight

Making the components of a home theater
less obvious is another way to insure their safety; a 4K Blu-Ray player can be placed inside a cabinet, or an AV Receiver can be inside a shelf, rather than
having the two exposed to sight. In these cases, this can make controlling them
through an IR (infrared) control more difficult. The solution: kits that will
extend the IR signal so that the devices "see" the IR signal coming
from the remote. Mounting a TV onto the wall, while the opposite of
hiding it, will also make it less attractive for being removed because of how
its been mounted.

Security Systems and Cameras

There are portable and non-invasive home
security systems that work through the WiFI home network, and which enable
monitoring of the home theater, along with other areas of the home. At
its simplest, a WiFi-enabled camera can be set up to monitor the home theater
area and viewed remotely when the person is not at home. Other systems allow
for automated reports and messages to be sent when the camera detects motion.
Used singly, or in combination with WiFi-enabled home security systems, the
home theater can be protected at a minimum cost compared to what the cost was
for assembling the various components. And the safety of other areas of the
home can now be protected as well.

The idea behind home theater security is not just to protect what
has taken you so much time to put together, but to insure the piece of mind of
your home as well. So the choice whether to do this or not is yours.

Friday, February 03, 2017

People have been pretty happy to have
Blu-Ray playersas part of their home
theaters over these last few years -- and you bet that there are lots and lots
of Blu-Ray movies to watch. So why get a new 4K Blu-Ray player
to replace what
is already there? The answer is because a 4K Blu-Ray player does a lot more
than just compliment a new 4K TV and is backwardly compatible with all
the spinning video discs (Blu-Ray and DVD) and audio discs (CDs) that are
already a part of your existing library. A 4K Blu-Ray player ups the game and brings
you even closer to the vaunted "movie experience" that makes going to
watch on a silver screen no longer such a big deal. So let's detail just what a
4K Blu-Ray player brings to your home theater.

Higher Video Resolution

A Blu-Ray disc provides a Full HD, 1080p
video signal that, unlike streaming, is stable and consistent. But that's
peanuts compared to a 4K Blu-Ray disc: 108 Mbps is the speed at which the data
is being sent from the 4K disc — so roughly that means you're getting a picture
with 4X the resolution that was once your HD "standard." Obviously
that also means you're getting more detail in what's flashing across the TV's display.

More Color

Color can be described in all kinds of
technical terms, but the fact is that a Blu-Ray disc could only approach the
"reality" of the color palette that makes up real life. It did a good
job, sure, but a 4K Blu-Ray disc does a lot better. The wider color
gamut of billions of colors that can now be displayed is a lot closer to the
“real world” and so makes for a much better viewing experience.

High Dynamic Range

High Dynamic Range (HDR)is a part of the video signal being put forth
by the 4K disc in the 4K Blu-Ray player. What you see as a result is more color
and light information being imparted into each pixel now displayed. With the TV now being able to process a HDR signal,
as most now available can, the pixel is able to contain more
"information" and so allow for a greater separation between light and
dark, without light areas being "overblown" and washed out, or black
areas turning into inky pools where nothing can be seen in them.

Higher Audio Resolution

Lost in all the talk about the video is
just how in proved the audio becomes on a 4K Blu-Ray disc. Besides the expected
Dolby Digital and DTS, a 4K Blu-Ray disc supports the Dolby Atmos standard as
well as DTS-X surround sound formats. These audio formats add overhead audio to
the now standard surround soundand work
to create a much more convincing and immersive sound experience.

Up-scaling Your Existing Library

One of the big selling points when
Blu-Ray players first came out was that playing a DVD on them would result in a
better picture than if using a DVD player. This was because the newer and
enhanced technologies of the Blu-Ray player could increase the overall
perception as to how a DVD looked when played. This is even more true with a 4K
Blu-Ray player, only now it's a Blu-Ray disc that gets the enhancements so as
to improve on how it looks. And as mentioned earlier, the 4K Blu-Ray player doesn't discriminate against the past
and so plays all the popular disc formats prevalent today.

As is now obvious, a 4K Blu-Ray player
has technology built into it that a Blu-Ray player can only dream of. And
because this technology is "transparent" to the user -- all you need
do is pop in a 4K disc, start it spinning and sit back to enjoy the show.